‘I believe that the human face is the best document of time,’ says photographer Birgit Püve. Since 2012, she has been capturing the humour and defiance, modernity and traditionalism in Estonia as the country forges ahead two decades after the last Soviet soldiers left

What makes a good photograph? What defines a bad one? And who do the judges of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize think they are?
Such are the questions that arise from looking at the pictures included in this year’s Portrait Salon, an exhibition of photographs rejected by the National Portrait Gallery’s competition

Previously unseen prints by award-winning South African photographer Pieter Hugo will go on show in London at the National Portrait Gallery. This image taken in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, is of young men from the Xhosa tribe on the day of their boys-to-men initiation ceremony

Photographer Jessica Fulford-Dobson travelled twice to Afghanistan to capture the Skateistan project, set up in the outskirts of Kabul to give girls between the ages of five and 16 the chance to skateboard, in a country where they are not allowed on bicycles

This year’s Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize 2014 has been won by David Titlow – see his work here along with the other shortlisted images, plus highlights from the rest of the exhibition – including some by Guardian photographers